Tech Marathoners: John Wookey – Part 2

We ran yesterday Part 1 of the interview with John Wookey. Part 2 below focuses on his view of the future of the industry.

The next-gen of apps will "give more than they take"

AI is being delivered now as us to incremental functionality on existing applications. But we still haven't done what I expect, which is, at some point, step back and say…what if we had not built any applications at all, and we exist in a world in which the data around the business largely all available It may not be in your core CRM system or your ERP system, it may be sitting on some social site somewhere, but it's accessible in some way.

And you understand that your opportunity is to, if you understand the business context well enough, go get that data. And rather than ask people to type data into a system and then spit it back at them, {which is honestly what most applications do) That's what most apps really do...ask for data and then give it back to you.

Now....you can start with the objective and build a very different kind of app. The idea is that you say, "I have this quota for this quarter, and I need to hit this target, or I have this many customer support tickets I need to get through." Or, "This is my objective for a marketing campaign." Or, "This is my my manufacturing objectives for the month." Or, "This is the cost model we have in place for supply chain." Or, "This is the period of time in which we want to close our books." Or, "This is our recruiting target for HR."

There's a million business systems out there. If you think about it, they don't exist because we like having them. They exist because we have some business problems we are trying to get help with.

And so if you start with the idea of, here's the business objective, AND there's all the data in the world. What kind of an application would you build? The analogy I always use is Waze, which is to me, like the application that showed the best value or the best shift that will happen. When you go from a world in which you have an app that shows you red lines, yellow lines and green lines on a hard to read Google Maps, which is kind of what used to be in the traffic apps, if you remember them. To Waze. No one cares what the traffic is like in that area. What they care about is finding the best route to get home. How do I get from A to B as quickly, easily as possible. And tell me my options in doing that. And then feed me, turn by turn what I should be doing.

Waze is in an application that gives more than it takes. I think, and it won't just be about AI. But I use AI because it helps illustrate a new way to think about Apps in a world in which the necessary data already exists and you can connect to it. And because I think AI will be in the center of most of these Apps. But the idea that the data exists in the world, the fact that we can understand the business objectives, and the fact that we can go be an external applications for them that actually would be, will give more than they take. I think we'll define a generation of applications.

I think it's the same. I think it's this shift. It's this next generation of applications. It's this idea that applications are not only going to become smart, and they're going to understand what you're trying to accomplish and they're going to give you choices but they're going to be highly adaptive in doing that. They're going to redefine themselves. They'll be a set of constraints around the organization model. The way the organization wants to run its business, but within that, an individual, the way they want to work, they way they want to connect with the data, I think these applications will be incredible. The great applications of the future will be incredibly personalized.

So from a building software perspective, it's wildly exciting. It's a huge joy I think for software developers to think about all these tools that exist now to build applications that truly delight people and then marry them to what they're trying to accomplish.

From a business perspective, it'll be incredibly challenging because it is really hard when you're an existing player of a huge legacy footprint to make the shift in a non-disruptive way to your business. Another angle – that I started to hear from COO's about it over the last couple of years, was, "explain to me again why we're signing a three year subscription contract?" I understand users go up or down. Why is this not more of a model I can end up where it's more consumption based? There was a huge shift in going from perpetual license to subscription. But going from subscription to consumption based will be the next thing I think customers start looking at.

And it won't be a clean one. I think it's going to be some sort of an evolution of subscription that has a more flexible model based on the idea that if the roll-out doesn't go as fast as we thought, you don't pay as much. It goes faster, you pay more. And there's some boundaries around it. But I think more and more that's going be the expectation driven because of people like Amazon. And I think that will be a good change, because it will tie vendor and customer success together more closely....which is a good thing. But the change will be tough shift.

The coming data war

My wife and I were driving somewhere and she pointed out a building with "Google Cloud" on it. She goes, "What's Google Cloud? Is that different than Google?" And I said, "Well, Google is like a lot of organizations, they're trying to build a big infrastructure businesses. And of course the 800 pound gorilla in that space is Amazon. But everybody else is trying to chase that business and catch up. I hear about Alibaba now, Google of course, Oracle keeps talking about it, IBM's in the space, Microsoft's in the space.

I just never know with Google....is it self driving cars, is it glass, it's always hard to figure out where they go next with their business. But if they're serious about being a cloud infrastructure player, given where they are today, I don't know how they do that. You have to find a way to create some kind of critical mass for that. And at some point, you have to look around and say, well, what do we, how do we do that? Doing it organically is tough.

They have great AI services but I don't think that's going make anybody move over to their infra structure. Because AWS has AI services as well. So does Microsoft.

So it seems to me that someone like Google has to go and acquire something like Salesforce. And I don't know if it'll happen or how it would work. I don't know culturally how it would set. But they need to think about if you're going go in the cloud wars, how do you create enough content data, critical mass, where people say, I already have those apps and that data in your system, I might as well look at what else they have and consider it.

That's where there's always going to be the tricky thing for the evolution as they look at what the next big business opportunity is, how do it get there if they're five or ten years behind the organization that's already the leader in the space?

I think they have to acquire something big to do it. I think if they got really worried about Microsoft, I can see someday, both Amazon and Google saying, "Oh crap. We have to go buy Salesforce."

They need a strong application footprint. And frankly there isn't really a strong applications footprint on the ERP side for cloud yet. There's Netsuite and Microsoft has ERP,. Workday is probably the strongest independent ERP in the Cloud.

And so how do you think about that? And there's a decent ecosystem around Salesforce. Including some ERP stuff and some industry stuff that with the right investment could become significant in that space.

So I think both Amazon and Google could both wake up one day and say, we need to go get that. Which could become an interesting acquisition war. And if they start, Microsoft will probably jump in as well.

It's a good question. And yet I think what Facebook realized with I think Microsoft is realized it's the war of the future is a war for data. It's how do you get this data? I think Microsoft buying LinkedIn was smart. I think them buying Github was smart. They clearly get that the future is about the data. And the data that sits out there that they don't own, that is really fundamental to business is the customer data. And honestly, Salesforce owns that.

So, that to me, if you're Google or Amazon, that's kind of the next thing you think about.

Comments

We ran yesterday Part 1 of the interview with John Wookey. Part 2 below focuses on his view of the future of the industry.

The next-gen of apps will "give more than they take"

AI is being delivered now as us to incremental functionality on existing applications. But we still haven't done what I expect, which is, at some point, step back and say…what if we had not built any applications at all, and we exist in a world in which the data around the business largely all available It may not be in your core CRM system or your ERP system, it may be sitting on some social site somewhere, but it's accessible in some way.

And you understand that your opportunity is to, if you understand the business context well enough, go get that data. And rather than ask people to type data into a system and then spit it back at them, {which is honestly what most applications do) That's what most apps really do...ask for data and then give it back to you.

Now....you can start with the objective and build a very different kind of app. The idea is that you say, "I have this quota for this quarter, and I need to hit this target, or I have this many customer support tickets I need to get through." Or, "This is my objective for a marketing campaign." Or, "This is my my manufacturing objectives for the month." Or, "This is the cost model we have in place for supply chain." Or, "This is the period of time in which we want to close our books." Or, "This is our recruiting target for HR."

There's a million business systems out there. If you think about it, they don't exist because we like having them. They exist because we have some business problems we are trying to get help with.

And so if you start with the idea of, here's the business objective, AND there's all the data in the world. What kind of an application would you build? The analogy I always use is Waze, which is to me, like the application that showed the best value or the best shift that will happen. When you go from a world in which you have an app that shows you red lines, yellow lines and green lines on a hard to read Google Maps, which is kind of what used to be in the traffic apps, if you remember them. To Waze. No one cares what the traffic is like in that area. What they care about is finding the best route to get home. How do I get from A to B as quickly, easily as possible. And tell me my options in doing that. And then feed me, turn by turn what I should be doing.

Waze is in an application that gives more than it takes. I think, and it won't just be about AI. But I use AI because it helps illustrate a new way to think about Apps in a world in which the necessary data already exists and you can connect to it. And because I think AI will be in the center of most of these Apps. But the idea that the data exists in the world, the fact that we can understand the business objectives, and the fact that we can go be an external applications for them that actually would be, will give more than they take. I think we'll define a generation of applications.

I think it's the same. I think it's this shift. It's this next generation of applications. It's this idea that applications are not only going to become smart, and they're going to understand what you're trying to accomplish and they're going to give you choices but they're going to be highly adaptive in doing that. They're going to redefine themselves. They'll be a set of constraints around the organization model. The way the organization wants to run its business, but within that, an individual, the way they want to work, they way they want to connect with the data, I think these applications will be incredible. The great applications of the future will be incredibly personalized.

So from a building software perspective, it's wildly exciting. It's a huge joy I think for software developers to think about all these tools that exist now to build applications that truly delight people and then marry them to what they're trying to accomplish.

From a business perspective, it'll be incredibly challenging because it is really hard when you're an existing player of a huge legacy footprint to make the shift in a non-disruptive way to your business. Another angle – that I started to hear from COO's about it over the last couple of years, was, "explain to me again why we're signing a three year subscription contract?" I understand users go up or down. Why is this not more of a model I can end up where it's more consumption based? There was a huge shift in going from perpetual license to subscription. But going from subscription to consumption based will be the next thing I think customers start looking at.

And it won't be a clean one. I think it's going to be some sort of an evolution of subscription that has a more flexible model based on the idea that if the roll-out doesn't go as fast as we thought, you don't pay as much. It goes faster, you pay more. And there's some boundaries around it. But I think more and more that's going be the expectation driven because of people like Amazon. And I think that will be a good change, because it will tie vendor and customer success together more closely....which is a good thing. But the change will be tough shift.

The coming data war

My wife and I were driving somewhere and she pointed out a building with "Google Cloud" on it. She goes, "What's Google Cloud? Is that different than Google?" And I said, "Well, Google is like a lot of organizations, they're trying to build a big infrastructure businesses. And of course the 800 pound gorilla in that space is Amazon. But everybody else is trying to chase that business and catch up. I hear about Alibaba now, Google of course, Oracle keeps talking about it, IBM's in the space, Microsoft's in the space.

I just never know with Google....is it self driving cars, is it glass, it's always hard to figure out where they go next with their business. But if they're serious about being a cloud infrastructure player, given where they are today, I don't know how they do that. You have to find a way to create some kind of critical mass for that. And at some point, you have to look around and say, well, what do we, how do we do that? Doing it organically is tough.

They have great AI services but I don't think that's going make anybody move over to their infra structure. Because AWS has AI services as well. So does Microsoft.

So it seems to me that someone like Google has to go and acquire something like Salesforce. And I don't know if it'll happen or how it would work. I don't know culturally how it would set. But they need to think about if you're going go in the cloud wars, how do you create enough content data, critical mass, where people say, I already have those apps and that data in your system, I might as well look at what else they have and consider it.

That's where there's always going to be the tricky thing for the evolution as they look at what the next big business opportunity is, how do it get there if they're five or ten years behind the organization that's already the leader in the space?

I think they have to acquire something big to do it. I think if they got really worried about Microsoft, I can see someday, both Amazon and Google saying, "Oh crap. We have to go buy Salesforce."

They need a strong application footprint. And frankly there isn't really a strong applications footprint on the ERP side for cloud yet. There's Netsuite and Microsoft has ERP,. Workday is probably the strongest independent ERP in the Cloud.

And so how do you think about that? And there's a decent ecosystem around Salesforce. Including some ERP stuff and some industry stuff that with the right investment could become significant in that space.

So I think both Amazon and Google could both wake up one day and say, we need to go get that. Which could become an interesting acquisition war. And if they start, Microsoft will probably jump in as well.

It's a good question. And yet I think what Facebook realized with I think Microsoft is realized it's the war of the future is a war for data. It's how do you get this data? I think Microsoft buying LinkedIn was smart. I think them buying Github was smart. They clearly get that the future is about the data. And the data that sits out there that they don't own, that is really fundamental to business is the customer data. And honestly, Salesforce owns that.

So, that to me, if you're Google or Amazon, that's kind of the next thing you think about.